Bill Nye Speaking at UCSD Event on Friday

Science communicator and TV personality Bill Nye will visit UC San Diego on Friday, March 2 to help dedicate the school’s new Halicioğlu Data Science Institute. Most known for his time leading the TV show “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” Nye has also been the CEO of the Planetary Society and currently hosts “Bill Nye Saves the World” on Netflix.

The new institute was created with the aim of training students to work with data on a variety of levels.

The center is named after Taner Halicioğlu, an alumnus of UCSD who donated $75 million to the university’s “Campaign for UC San Diego.” Halicioğlu’s gift served as the foundation for creating the institute, but over $1 billion have been raised to fund the construction of the institute as well as to offer fellowships and hire lecturers.

“Because Data Science is an extremely cross-disciplinary subject, it only seems fitting that something like an institute should exist in order to support it,” Halicioğlu wrote on his Facebook page around the time of the donation. “While this Institute’s roots will be mainly with computer science, math, and cognitive science, its reaches will span across the campus.”